Touch Book

Last Thursday I finally managed to get my Touch Book out of the clutches of the Royal Mail. Have now got it set up for tinternet.

Does this make me the first RISC OS user with one of these illusive beasties?

Don’t have any experience with development, but come the new year I’m very willing to have a crack at building and testing RO5 for it, as long as there’s a few others prepared to hold my hand.

Does this make me the first RISC OS user with one of these illusive beasties?

As far as I know, yes!

Don’t have any experience with development, but come the new year I’m very willing to have a crack at building and testing RO5 for it, as long as there’s a few others prepared to hold my hand.

I’ll be able to help with that I suspect.

Of course there’s the slight problem that we don’t have the graphics driver ready yet. Obviously we do have working graphics on the beagleboard, but for the Touch Book, Pandora, and anything else with a dumb LCD panel we need a driver that understands the limits of the panel and is able to use the display scaling features of the OMAP to stretch/squash the screen to fit the panel – something that noone’s got around to writing yet.

In the new year I’ll press Adrian Lees for an answer as to whether he’s planning on writing us a full video driver (at the moment he seems to be focusing on Aemulor – see here). If he isn’t, and noone else steps up to the task, then I’ll start looking at it myself once I’ve got the audio driver working.

“Does this make me the first RISC OS user with one of these illusive beasties?”

Grrr, yes it probably does. Still waiting for mine, ordered in June :-(

They haven’t taken the money yet, so I’m not expecting it to arrive before the new year :-(

If e m rogers would give the date of order of his/her Touch Book, this would be a guide to when Bryan might get his. I am very interested to know how this Touch Book performs running Linux (as well as RISC OS) as I might buy one.

OK, who has been rigging the vote:

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=591

:-)

BTW, I’m still waiting for my Touchbook because Barclays decided that a card payment to a company in the US looked dodgy and blocked it :-(

So now I’ve got to wait for Always Innovating to reprocess my order. Hopefully it hasn’t dropped me to the back of the queue :-(((((

OK, who has been rigging the vote:

Maybe no one:

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=615

Countless RISC OS users would surely like to see the Touch Book for themselves at a show.

I’m willing to share the purchase price of a TB with others, with the intention of it being available for inspection at the Wakefield Acorn and RISC OS show on 24 Apr 2010.

While there probably wouldn’t be a working port for it in time for this event (unless other existing TB owners begin contributing), the hardware could be inspected and the Always Innovating OS evaluated.

Delivery could be made to someone with more technical knowledge and time on their hands than me.

Does anyone think this is a worthwhile idea? Thanks (and I hope I can get to the show, although there’s a serious clash in my diary).

(Deleted after reading this post.)

ROOL have placed their order for a Touch Book to evaluate it and help with the porting where we can.

If a RISC OS dealer could put in a bulk order for Touch Books with Always Innovating, perhaps we could get them more quickly? It seems that the Touch Books are taking an age to reach people here in the UK. Are RISC OS dealers so risc ( :-) ) aversive that they won’t order? Come on Castle or CJE just buy them and advertise them to Linux folk as well as us.

Don’t forget that the port to the Beagle Board isn’t finished yet and the Touch Book port requires further work beyond that point. So any RISC OS dealer out there willing to take a punt would also need to find a software engineer with the right skills to do that work for an affordable price (which would probably be tricky) or wait for an uncertain amount of time for the community-driven work to get the ports finished.

I don’t think RISC OS dealers are all that sure it’s the right hardware for most RISC OS users: no ATA (hard disc) support or Ethernet and fairly limited maximum screen resolution, so you have to use USB mass storage devices (which RISC OS can’t cope with being bigger than 2GB at the moment), USB to Ethernet adapters and maybe network attached storage (NAS). Actually, I think it has WiFi but someone needs to write the drivers for that.

For certain niche applications, the Touch Book is an interesting and useful addition to the list of native RISC OS hardware platforms – indeed, I’d find it useful (with WiFi support implemented). For existing RiscPC and IYONIX owners (and the rest) it’s just not a suitable desktop replacement.

I would buy a Touch Book even without RISC OS and I bet I am not the only one. I am just waiting for some reports from ‘our folk’ as to how reliable it is and, if it is, I am going to order it. If no RISC OS dealer is selling it, I will order it from a dealer who is, here or direct from Always Innovating. It’s battery life is much longer than that of my Eee PC with its inefficient Intel Atom processor. As to the ‘right’ hardware for RISC OS, it doesn’t bother me that it doesn’t have a hard drive. I could use those USB ‘sticks’ with <= 2GB capacity. We desperately need a portable to demonstrate RISC OS to others outside the RISC OS community. I could use it when I take Open University tutorials away from home (I am a Mathematics tutor). Even if I could just show graphs and stuff to my students in Draw or TechWriter, this would be useful. No, I don’t want to do this on other operating systems if I can help it. I am not looking at it as a desktop computer replacement. People want portables as well as desktop computers. I think our dealers are too cautious. Castle or CJE could be the first in the UK to market the Touch Book and advertise not just to the RISC OS folk, but to the general public. It doesn’t matter that initially it won’t have RISC OS installed, just sell it with Linux.

While I quite agree that it would seem like the Touch Book could be just the thing for you, David, I was playing Devil’s advocate in my previous post. RISC OS dealers will be asking themselves the question “is someone like David Lane in the minority or are there enough of them about to justify the risk of a bulk purchase and sustain profits in the face of inevitable support issues?”.

Personally, I would love to own a portable – something to keep me amused on long train journeys, or an easy method to access common applications away from home. It is not a desktop replacement by any means. Desktop computers are designed the way they are for a reason – I much prefer having a keyboard, mouse, and nice big chunky monitor in front of me. However, for obvious reasons, that is not a practical train travel solution.

My operating system of choice is undoubtedly RISC OS - don’t believe what Rob Kendrick and that crowd are saying over on a certain TIB thread, every time I use Windows, in spite of being fairly familiar with it, I am reminded why I keep coming back to RISC OS. So, obviously if a portable can grant me RISC OS anywhere I want it that is a huge incentive towards buying one.

I have observed my brother’s laptop on the desk next door – a hefty Dell product with an Intel processor running Vista. The battery life is barely long enough to sustain through a full-length movie. I don’t want to have to put up with that. A train journey to, say, Scotland lasts several hours (more if Network Rail screws up again), so the lower power consumption of an ARM processor is an obvious, tangible benefit.

And, joy of joys, we just happen to have the source to an OS on our hands which was not only written for the ARM processor, but holds the claim to fame of in fact being the OS the ARM processor was originally designed to run. What’s not to like?

And, joy of joys, we just happen to have the source to an OS on our hands which was not only written for the ARM processor, but holds the claim to fame of in fact being the OS the ARM processor was originally designed to run. What’s not to like?

Well, a tiny bit of perspective would be good. I’m not going get into an advocacy discussion, but the reality is that modern ARM processors are wildly different to those RISC OS was originally run on. The OS of choice in the last 15 years has generally been ARM Linux or WinCE, although mostly ARM Linux (which incidentally, was “written for the ARM processor”). That has a vast amount of ready-to-run software, codecs, dev tools and the like which RISC OS simply does not. It also has a more open license.

From a pragmatic viewpoint, it’s a far better choice, and we see that reflected in just about every ARM device now being released. I’m not saying not to use RISC OS, but let’s be realistic in our comparisons. Also:

a hefty Dell product … lower power consumption of an ARM processor

Apples and pears. Modern x86-based sub-portables (11-13” range) easily have battery lives in the 4+ hour range. A lot of the power consumption comes from the screen, not the processor.

As to the other comments, I don’t think the TB is really a compelling product in general for a reseller – there are more recent products which are faster and cheaper which have just been announced.

Woo, according to the parcel tracker my Touchbook cleared customs this morning :-)

I’m going to start a thread over in the General category for discussions about how to get RISC OS onto it, as that seems a better place than in Announcements.

How about this for a project name – RISC OS Build On Touchbook, or ROBOT for short :-)

Lucky you! If you wouldn’t mind linking to ROBOT from a new topic on the innovatingtouch.com forum it’d be great. Otherwise I’ll do so later on.

Modern x86-based sub-portables (11-13” range) easily have battery lives in the 4+ hour range.

I’m sure that’s very impressive and all, but Always Innovating claim a 10-hour battery life, QED. (Although apparently that’s only with the keyboard attached – maybe it contains a backup battery or something.) And you obviously haven’t any experience with the British railway system – I assure you, 4 hours is quite inadequate!

There is, of course, another advantage which I’d forgotten to mention – I’ve always wanted a graphics tablet. (Which this isn’t, but a touchscreen is sufficient – Paint will do the rest.)

Always Innovating claim a 10-hour battery life,

Well, since you’re splitting hairs, the machine I had in mind would be dual core, at least a magnitude faster (on one processor), and have substantially more memory and disk, all at the same price. Anyway, if you wanted to pay more for 12 hours:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/01/asus-laptop-makes-intel-nvidia-gpus-work-together.ars

And I have no doubt you can find 9” netbooks in the 10 hour range which are both cheaper and faster than the TB. I’m not advocating any of these solutions, all I’m again asking for is a little bit of perspective given your original statements.

Yay, my Touchbook has arrived :-)

First problem: need to charge it up, which requires a US to UK plug converter.

Now I know what you are thinking, why didn’t I get one of those in advance? Well not being (completely!) stupid I did…

...six months ago when I ordered the Touchbook!

Can I now remember where I put it? Of course not :-(

So you made sure that the Touch Book power supply has a wide range input, that is good! (normally they have 110V at 60Hz there ;-)

What do you mean, perspective? I was merely making my support known for the potential of porting RISC OS to the TouchBook. This is not a matter of ready-to-run software, codecs, or dev tools. I like using RISC OS, and it would be all the better if I did not have to be in my house in order to do so. It’s not a matter of the features it does and doesn’t have. I am fully aware of RISC OS’s shortcomings, and I am prepared to put up with them. As I mentioned in my original post, RISC OS is, for practically everything I want of a computer (no, I’m not a budding film director, CGI modeller or Flash developer, why do you ask?) the solution I would choose for preference. Realism is one thing, but despondency is another.

Incidentally, when I referred to ‘that crowd’ I was including you… for exactly the reasons you are demonstrating here.

I suspect that the quoted 12 hour time is based on a highly theoretical minimum processor requirement – it would never stand up to 12 hours of solid practical usage.

What do you mean, perspective

Your initial post gave a very one-sided view of ARM and ARM hardware. I’m not advocating for an against RISC OS - or any particular solution. Not by a long shot, but your statements certainly deserved clarification. ARM hardware is not the only option for RISC OS.

Incidentally, when I referred to ‘that crowd’ I was including you… for exactly the reasons you are demonstrating here.

Please don’t paint me with any brush you have in mind, and let’s spare the implied insults for csa. If you wish to comment on/argue against something specific I have said somewhere, then reply there, don’t make broad accusations, and certainly don’t assume I might agree with anyone else post on TIB.

Have my TB now :)

Now the next stage getting RISC OS on to it, as mentioned before somewhere it can boot into 3 different OS’s at the moment and there is a nice empty space left on the start up screen for a fourth. Unfortunately I have no programming skills so I will keep looking around here and the Touch Book site for inspiration and one day soon’ish will give it a go. Thanks for all the hard work.

Hi.

I just want to say that I. too, have received my Touch Book, now, so you have yet another guinea pig… :)

Also, I do have programming experience, but not that much on low-level works (drivers, etc.), and other commitments have kept me from getting very involved, so far…

I think the first I should do is to get my BeagleBoard (!) up and running, since RISC OS is known to work there, and I haven’t yet tested that one, either.

Once or if that works, I’ll look into how I may contribute to the development.